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I am firmly convinced that the left exists in a self-congratulatory echo chamber. This is particularly true in certain areas of the country. One of the consequences of this is often that their logic and ideas are unchallenged, untested, and just plain sloppy. They are not stupid or evil people. They simply aren’t rigorous in their logic because they don’t have to face dissenting views head on.

Unfortunately, these are precisely the type of people who dominate the legacy media and I think it is a prominent part of why the media organizations are struggling. The average person reads what they produce and often reacts with a resounding: “huh?”.

Here is a great example of what I mean. Friday’s Inquirer had a piece by George Curry about how “right wing media and political figures” are fomenting political violence. Here’s his evidence:

1. Glenn Beck talked about alleged FEMA concentration camps…(drum roll)…in the process of demonstrating that they are an urban legend.

2. A Republican congressman I’d never heard of said not-very-nice things about the IRS after some moonbat flew a plane into an IRS office building.

3. After a teenager in NJ made a racist announcement over a Walmart public address system, Bill Bennett said, “Racism in America is dead. We had slavery, then we had Jim Crow - and now we have the occasional public utterance of a bad word.”

That’s it. That’s his evidence. Nothing more.

Glenn Beck talked about something he was debunking. A no-name Congressman said things about the oh-so-popular IRS. Bill Bennett pointed out that in a country that once had slavery, Jim Crow and lynchings, the fact that a teenager on a P-A system was national news might be viewed as progress.

Oh those hateful, violence-inciting conservatives.

We just had 8 years of the Bush presidency during which “Bush is a Nazi” and “Bush lied. People died.” were common phrases. There was a movie and at least two or three books about assassinating George Bush. Forums like the Daily Kos were filled with venomous, hate-filled screeds. Furthermore, we’ve seen many conservative speakers either assaulted or had speeches cancelled because of threats of violence.

But you’d think that never happened reading the legacy media. They refuse to acknowledge it, while making unsupportable accusations against conservatives. Their reasoning is lacking, to put it nicely and I don’t think you need to be a right winger to recognize the problem.